Chapter summary
At five in the morning Julien Sorel obtains from Rênal three days' leave. Madame de Rênal receives him with forced coldness; he answers with haughtiness and leaves without telling her about the trip, and she learns of his departure only from her son and goes to bed, desolate. Julien climbs the great mountain, spends the late afternoon in a grotto where he writes his thoughts, which he burns before leaving, and arrives at one in the morning at the house of Fouqué, a young timber merchant. Fouqué proposes a partnership in the business, at four thousand francs a year, and Julien, after weighing the offer, refuses, saying that his vocation for the holy ministry does not allow him to accept. His friend cannot understand it.
Analysis
Julien leaves without warning her because her coldness wounds him: he came full of admiration, expecting no welcome but a friendly one, reads in the reception the intention of putting him back in his place, and recalls the position he holds before a noble and wealthy heiress. Keeping silent about the trip is the way he finds to show how little he believes in friendly relations with her. His refusal of Fouqué, in the end, shows that the trip was not an escape: the career he has chosen lies on the other side.
Ch. XII. In the grotto, on the way to Fouqué's house, alone and far from any gaze, Julien knows the greatest happiness he has had until then, and it comes from freedom, not from a conquest:
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